My mind tangled up into a tight little knot. I thought about it for a minute and said, “I don't know.”
“Maybe he was afraid we'd find prints.”
“Did you?”
“No. It was clean. I don't get it. He had to know it was impossible to sneak around that pier without getting caught. There was a dead cop on that barge. A whole squad was crawling around down there. Why take the risk?”
“Like you said. Maybe he was afraid he'd left his prints on it. Maybe he didn't know it was clean.”
Maggie gnawed on her lower lip, totally unsatisfied by the explanation. “It still doesn't make sense. Say we did find his prints on the vid. He could've beaten any wrap we tried to pin on him. There's probably a thousand ways he could explain it away. Especially if he really works for the Libre. He could say he lost it some other time. Who knows how many stories he's covered down on that pier? It's not like we found the vid in the cabin, or even on the barge.”
Maggie's words barely echoed in my head. I felt like there was a doubled-up rubber band squeezing down on my brain. Why did Ian make such a show of knocking the guy around? Why not just have the unis escort him off the pier? But instead, he made a big production out of it, all under the guise that he was trying to keep the case from going public. Why? The answer was close, so close. … But I couldn't pin it down. I felt like I was trying to grab hold of smoke.
Maggie kept the theories coming. “What if he didn't know it was blank? Maybe the camera broke down on him without him realizing it, and he thought he had filmed the murder, but he really missed the whole thing. Or maybe he just got the blank vid mixed up with the real vid of the beheading. If he thought he'd dropped the beheading vid, he'd have plenty of reason to come back for it, even if it was the wrong one.”
I took another swig of brandy and tried to tune her out. Her words were clogging up my thoughts. I closed my eyes and tried to relax away the clutter in my head. Fragmented ideas rattled around my skull. Maggie was still talking, her voice seeping into my consciousness. She was saying something about how it was just our luck that he dropped the blank vid instead of the real one.
It clicked. Instant understanding surged through my head like a drug. “Are we dumb? That son of a bitch,” I mumbled.
“Who?”
“Ian.”
ten
I TIGHTENED the slicker's hood then tilted my head forward and ran the water off in little streams. I needed to keep dry—couldn't afford to track water all over. I watched Maggie hustle through the drumming rain, stop on the porch, and knock on the door. Within seconds, she was inside.
I wished we could've done this when Yuri wasn't home, but the house had barred windows and dead-bolted doors. We wanted to get in and out with nobody knowing, and there was no way to break into that place without leaving some serious damage behind. Maggie wanted to do it official, warrant and all, but there was no chance. Our chain of evidence was so weak as to be nonexistent—a decorated police officer, an offworlder, and a cameraman had dinner together, therefore they killed thirteen people and a cop. The judge would be liable to hold you in contempt just for wasting his time.
Ian was a smooth bastard. His transformation from candyass to badass boggled my mind. And he had a brain, which made him all the more dangerous.
He'd done some quick thinking on that pier. His videographer screwed up royally. After he shot his little snuff film, he probably had to clear his fat ass out of there in a hurry—there was a cop snooping around that barge. I could see the cameraman pumping his flabby legs in the dark, trying to carry all his equipment. He'd have a tripod in one hand and maybe a lens in the other, cameras and lights strung over his shoulders. I could picture the shoulder straps sliding off because he didn't have the kind of shoulders you could hook something on. There were no right angles on that body, just slopes and curves. He'd be running along, with his arms pinned to his sides to keep from dropping the gear that had already fallen from his shoulders down to his elbows. He'd be like an overloaded burro spooked by a thunderclap, galloping along with shit bouncing all over the damn place. He wouldn't have noticed the vid jarring free from one of his bags, or squeezing out of a pocket. The guy probably made it all the way home before he noticed he'd lost it.
Yuri came back for his vid, desperate to get it back, but by the time he got back to the pier, he found the place overrun with cops. He risked sneaking onto the pier anyway, bringing a camera with him, figuring that if he got caught, he could claim he was trying to get footage for his job.
And there was Ian, with the snuff film already in his shirt pocket courtesy of that young rookie cop who had found it in the weeds. Ian knew what it was, and he knew he needed to get rid of it before he and Maggie had their viewing. When he saw some uniforms with Yuri Kiper in tow, he thought quick. He played the tough guy and brought the hammer down on Yuri, acting like he was trying to keep the press out of KOP biz. He slapped the guy around and pulled a blank vid from his camera. Then a quick switch, and he hurled the real vid out into the Koba.
I gave it another minute before I came out from behind the shrub and tromped through Yuri Kiper's jungle scrub yard. I flattened myself against the side of his house and peeked through the window. Maggie was right where I expected her, in the sitting room, facing the entryway. The cameraman had his back to me. There'd be no problem getting through the front door, but his seat gave him a perfect view of the sitting room doorway. I'd have to walk past that doorway in order to make it to the back of the house. I'd be in plain sight. I didn't let myself worry about it. Maggie would think of something.
I moved along the wall and stepped up onto the porch. I slipped out of my shoes and then tangled with the slicker, finally managing to yank my splinted hand through the sleeve. I rolled my shoes up inside the slicker and set the whole pile on the ground alongside the porch. The door was cracked. How Maggie had pulled that off I wasn't sure, but I pushed my way through. I slid over the floor in my bare feet and edged up to the sitting room doorway.
I could hear Maggie's voice clearly now. “And how long have you been with the Libre?”
“Almost fifteen years, but I was just a gofer for the first couple,” he responded.
“How did you learn to operate a camera? Did you go to school?”
“No. I just picked it up helping the other camera guys.” I could picture him shrugging as he spoke.
“Do you work with the same reporter all the time?”
“No. When a story comes up, they assign whichever one of us is available. Why?”
“I was wondering how it was that you showed up on the pier the other night.”
“I guess it was my turn.”
“Who was the reporter?”
“Hoeg. Julia Hoeg.”
“I didn't see her there.”
“She was late, so I started shooting without her. That was when one of your cohorts saw me and kicked me off the pier.”
“You mean that literally?”
He didn't answer.
“Tell me what happened to your face.”
“Nothing. It was an accident.”
“If an officer is responsible, you can file a complaint with KOP, you know.” She was softballing him. She'd be turning up the heat soon.
“I don't want any trouble.”
“Can I take a closer look at your face?”
“If you want.”
“Come over here so I can see in the light. … Okay, now hold still.”
I made a barefooted scamper past the open doorway, not bothering to look. I scurried through the kitchen and past a bathroom, then stopped at a bedroom that had been converted into an office. The room hummed with computer equipment that covered two walls. I couldn't hear Yuri and Maggie anymore, which was good. It meant they couldn't hear me either.
I didn't waste any time. I snatched up a tripod and studied its round feet, looking for bloodstains. I gave them a squirt of Luminol and turned off the lights, looking for the telltale blue glow of blood. Nop
e. I grabbed for another tripod but stopped when I saw that its feet were square. No other tripods. Damn.
I ejected the disc from a vid camera on the floor and held it up for my portable to make a bit-level copy of the data by beaming the ones and zeroes to a data chip in my pocket. Noises in the kitchen made me uneasy, but I kept working, knowing that Maggie was probably just stalling by getting him to make her some tea. I found three more cameras and repeated the process, each copy taking a nerve-wracking two minutes. I hoped Maggie had a lot to say.
I moved to his desk and pulled open the top left drawer, scoring nothing but a jumble of office supplies. I found more of the same in the next two drawers and then hit pay dirt on the bottom right. The drawer was full of vids lined up in neat rows. I scanned through the labels finding a complete row of station promos and next to it, a row of wedding vids. I ran my finger from innocuous label to innocuous label, disappointed even though I knew it had been way too much to expect that I might find any vids labeled “Barge Murders.” He'd have to be an idiot to keep vids like that in his office. Even so, until now, I'd been holding out hope that he was indeed a bona fide idiot.
I heard more footsteps in the kitchen and tried to ignore them. No wait. They're coming this way. I spun around in the desk chair just as the door opened. SHIT! In came somebody slender, definitely not Yuri Kiper. He startled upon seeing me. “Damn, man! You scared me.”
I was frozen in my seat.
“They didn't tell me there was anyone back here,” he said.
I recognized him from Adela's case files. Raj Gupta, ex-boyfriend of our death-row dish. I forced my dry mouth into action. “What the fuck are you doing here, kid? This is official police business.” I pulled my shoeless feet back under the chair, hopefully out of sight.
“Hey, sorry, man. I just came to pick up a lens. Yuri always forgets and brings it home. He and that cop lady didn't tell me you were back here. Otherwise, I would've knocked.”
“You work with Yuri?”
“Yeah. I work at Lagarto Libre. I'm an intern.”
More connections fired in my mind. “Do you see the lens you need?”
“Yeah, this is it right here.” He picked it up from a bookshelf then looked at me with his eyebrows up, waiting for permission to leave. Raj was a good-looking kid, dark hair, bright smile, confident air. …
“You can go,” I said. “But don't disturb them up front, you got me? This is official police business. You just walk straight out. Got it?”
“Yes, sir. I'll be on my way then.” Raj walked out, closing the door behind him.
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. Fuck me! I stared at the closed door expecting a raging Yuri Kiper to come storming in any moment. C'mon kid, just leave. Don't stop to chitchat. Just go. With every uneventful second, my heart pounded a little softer and a little slower. Kid must've done what I said. Yuri Kiper was none the wiser—at least for now. I turned back to the drawer and tried to focus on the vid labels, skimming through them until one finally jumped out at me, its title: “Liz—Complete Works.” I pulled it and sweated out the two minutes of copy time before putting it back in the drawer.
I shut the drawers and took one last look at the room to make sure everything was back in place. Looked good to me. I moved out into the hall and from there into the kitchen. I needed another distraction to help me get past the sitting room doorway. I placed a holo-free call to Maggie, then as we agreed, I hung up as soon as she answered. I tiptoed to the doorway and listened to the tail end of Maggie's fake phone conversation. “Yes, Mom,” she said. “I'll be by after work, okay?” Then after a short pause, “'Bye.”
“Sorry about that, Yuri,” she said. “Were you about to say something?”
“No.”
“Listen to me, Yuri.” The tone in Maggie's voice said it was definitely hardball time. “I know you and Ian have something going. I saw you having dinner with him.” Maggie was pacing. I could hear her shoes clacking loudly on the floor with her overemphasized steps. “Ian told you that you were sloppy. Sloppy how?”
Yuri played dumb. “I don't know what you're talking about. That cop beat me up for doing my job. You should be grilling him, not me.”
“Cut the shit, asshole.” Maggie was full into it now. “The Libre didn't send you out to that barge. I talked to your reporter friend. She said she never got a call that night.”
“She's lying.” Yuri was sounding whiny.
“Why would she lie?”
“She never showed up. She's just acting like she didn't get the call so she doesn't get in trouble with management. These reporters don't like getting their hair wet.”
Maggie's pacing stopped. “You expect me to believe that?”
“It's the truth,” he said, quiver-voiced.
“I want to know why you were snooping around that barge. I want to know what kind of shit you and my partner are into. I want to know about the offworlder. You're going to tell me, Yuri, or I'll be back here with a warrant.”
“But I didn't do anything.”
“Liar!” The sound of shattering glass burst from the sitting room. I seized my opportunity and scrammed out the front.
I arrived at Maggie's first and sat on her front stoop, rain sleeting off the slicker. We Lagartans didn't use these things often, rain gear was for tourists. We'd rather tough it out than look like offworlders. Not that it was that tough. Even during the long stretch of winter, when our polar location hid us from the sun and left us in total darkness for twenty-two hours a day, even then, this place stayed balmy.
Maggie came up the walk wearing a conspiratorial grin. “Did you get anything good?”
“Don't know yet.”
Maggie walked up to the door, which swung open for her DNA. I followed her through, my sopping shoes leaving little pools of water on the tile floor. Maggie snatched up a couple towels, tossed one my way. I stripped off the slicker, this time making sure I carefully slipped the sleeve over my splinting so as not to get knotted up again.
Maggie excused herself, and I settled in her living room, an almost cavernous room with monitor hide furniture and spotless white carpeting. I wondered how much she must pay to keep this carpet mold free. Her family was loaded, descendents of plantation owners who made their fortune on the long since defunct brandy trade.
Maggie stepped in, wearing a fresh set of clothes and bearing a couple glasses of what was sure to be a rare family vintage. I took a deep swig, swishing the brandy in my mouth, savoring the flavor before swallowing it down.
“You scared him pretty good,” I said.
“I wish you could've seen him when I smashed my tea glass. He was shaking, he was so scared.”
“Did he say anything useful?”
“No. He held firm to his story, flimsy as it was.”
“Ian's going to be fuming when he hears.”
“Good.”
I nodded, though I thought it likely that Ian had been expecting Maggie to confront the cameraman. He knew that Maggie had seen him with Yuri and the offworlder. I wouldn't have been surprised if Ian had spent time coaching Yuri, preparing him for Maggie's interrogation.
“Shall we see what we got?”
We made quick business of going through the copied vids, frustrated by the results. Nothing but a series of vids shot for his job, interviews with local pols, footage of social events, countless hours' worth of humdrum garbage. The only thing that showed any promise was the last vid I'd copied, the one titled “Liz—Complete Works,” but all five vid files were protected by an encryption scheme.
Maggie logged into the KOP systems and downloaded the latest encryption crackers and then started them up, checking each cracker's time estimates. “Damn,” she said as she tossed a holographic timer my way. I reflexively reached for it, surprised when I succeeded in batting it down. Maggie must've had one seriously top-notch system to be smart enough to alter the hologram's trajectory when my hand blocked its path. A cheaper system would've just passed the holo through
my hand. I mimed picking up the timer as if it were real, the timer's image moving along with my hands. I looked at the estimated completion date: December 18, 2790.
In hopes of cutting down the decryption time, Maggie tried offloading some of the processing work from her home system to the KOP databank servers. I held up the holo-timer for her to see, the new date: June 32, 2790. Not a whole lot better.
“This isn't going to work,” Maggie said. “We're going to need some serious processing power.” To the computer, she said, “Stop processing.”
I watched the timer vanish from my hands. “Any other ideas?”
“Yeah. Let me see what services are offered on the Orbital.”
Maggie got busy researching our options. I called Vlad, who assured me that nobody'd been by to visit Niki. He told me he was going to get sleepy soon and asked if it was okay for him to bring in his cousin Victor for the overnight shift.
“Is he trustworthy?” I asked.
“Like a brother,” he said.
“Fine. Do it.”
I decided not to call Niki. Let her fucking stew.
I sucked down the last drops of my brandy, thinking another sounded good, real good. I set off for the kitchen, hunting for that bottle. Maggie made it easy for me by leaving the bottle on the counter. I poured a full glass, took a couple long swigs, then topped my glass back off. I read the bottle's label:
ORZO
OAK AGED
2764
Damn. This was some good hooch. I decided I'd really take my time with this glass, try to enjoy it.
By the time I made it back into the living room, Maggie had it all worked out. There was an offworld company that could crack the vid files in under thirty hours. Maggie explained that they had a satellite network with a couple thousand sats, each one with far more processing power than it needed to do its job. They made a habit of selling off the excess processing time when they could find a buyer. For a job this big, they said they could dedicate a couple processors from each of the sats to cracking the encryption scheme.
Ex-KOP Page 9
